


a thorn in your side, and other shit that makes you bleed

by weezly14



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 16:26:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2354975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weezly14/pseuds/weezly14
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And you’d think the pain of it would’ve stopped by now, but it’s bleeding fresh anymore."</p>
            </blockquote>





	a thorn in your side, and other shit that makes you bleed

_i’ll be a thorn in your side ‘til you die_

-

            He’ll never admit it but when Glenn and Maggie and more of their people—the people he thought they’d lost forever—step out of the shadows in that damn box car, his breath hitches because he half expects _her_ to be there, too, against all odds as it is.

            But she isn’t, and there are more pressing things to take care of, and—

            And it’s more real every day.

            ( _She’s just gone._ )

\---

            It felt sorta like—was sorta like an open wound when they left the prison, like the Governor rolled up and took a knife to ‘em, cut ‘em open and they were running on adrenaline for a while, didn’t feel the pain so strong right away, and then they got far enough and collapsed and no one was chasing them but no one was _left_ , just him and her in a field of walkers, her daddy dead for sure and the rest of them—

            Just this open, jagged cut, left to fester and bleed and, sure, heal, but it didn’t feel like healing those nights in the woods, taking turns taking watch, living off snakes and squirrels and hiding out in the trunks of cars that can’t run anymore, can’t even sleep or the walkers’ll come for you.

            Or the walkers are just outside.

            And maybe the cut got infected, maybe it got bad, and he was ready to hack it off, finish it and be done, make the pain—the pain that makes no issue of hiding itself now the adrenaline’s mostly worn off—make it _stop_ , but then she gets this stupid ass notion she’d like a _drink_ , of all things, so there they are, traipsing around the fucking countryside looking for booze so she can drown her sorrows. And maybe he doesn’t stop her because he doesn’t have the energy or maybe ‘cause she’s so stubborn or maybe because he just wants _something_ to do. More than moving and staying ahead of walkers and keeping alive.

            It’s not much to live for, getting Beth her first drink, but it’s more than he’s had in a while, so he’ll take it.

            So he does, he takes her to this country club and maybe he was so wound up with his own pain he’d never stopped to think of hers, but it’s in the moment she’s sitting on that barstool with that bottle of goddamn peach schnapps that he thinks maybe her wound’s infected, too.

            ( _We’re all infected._ )

            And maybe she’s smarter than he gives her credit for—hell, he _knows_ she is, she’s survived this long, ain’t she?—but doesn’t alcohol disinfect or some shit? Don’t they pour it on wounds to get the gunk and the dirt out?

            And maybe the shack and the moonshine’s a shit show at first, but after that the wound—jagged and infected and hurting like a motherfucker—isn’t so bad anymore.

            After that they start to heal. Together.

            Like the initial cut was a communal thing that happened to them both—because it was _their_ people, _their_ home—the healing becomes communal, too.

            Maybe they don’t have her daddy or Rick or Michonne or Maggie, but they got each other and maybe it’s enough because it’s _something_.

            She tells him he’ll be the last man standing and he prays to her daddy’s God he ain’t, knows for sure he’d end it if he was—

But he’d be okay with being the last one standing so long as she’s still standing, too.

\---

            When she’s gone it’s like when someone presses their fingers in a wound, opens it up again, like hitting it and the scab comes off and it bleeds fresh like it never stopped in the first place, feels raw and painful like it hadn’t in a while and again there’s adrenaline at first and he doesn’t feel it so bad and then he collapses and it catches up with him, like when you’ve lost too much blood and you get weak, and he _can’t_ —

            But he keeps going. And it scabs over again.

            And it _hurts_ , ‘course it does.

            But he gets used to it. Learns how to carry it.

            She’s gone, and he lets the loss settle into his bones, learns to move with this weight, the way this (new) wound affects him.

\---

            Everyday it’s more likely she’s dead and everyday it gets a little easier. It heals up a little more.

But Beth Greene is like a scar and she won’t fade so easily. She’s wormed her way under his skin and he’ll carry her mark whether she’s around or not.

Forever, maybe.

\---

            And she’s not in the box car with the others and he told her she’d never see Maggie again and turns out he was right.

            (But he never wanted to be.)

            And they have more pressing things to work out, and he shoves down the pain, forces himself through it, catches his breath and avoids Maggie’s eyes and—

            And you’d think the pain of it would’ve stopped by now, but it’s bleeding fresh anymore.

\---

            She’s like a damn thorn stuck in him and the worse part is he half doesn’t even wanna rip it out, and no matter what he does he’ll bleed.

            Working her way under his skin like a damn siren.

            Smiling and hopeful and beautiful and—

\---

            (Gone.)

\---

            “Do you know what happened to Beth?”

            It’s after Terminus, after the goddamned box car, the smoke and the blood and the—

            And it’s her sister and he—

            “No.”

\---

            He doesn’t say: I’m sorry.

            He doesn’t say: I lost her.

            He doesn’t say: I might’ve loved her, maybe.

\---

            (He thinks she hears it anyway.)


End file.
